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We may be told that an image need not be thus closely
attached to its archetype, that we know images holding in the
absence of their archetype and that a warmed object may retain
its heat when the fire is withdrawn.
To begin with the image and archetype: If we are reminded of an
artist's picture we observe that here the image was produced by
the artist, not by his subject; even in the case of a
self-portrait, the picture is no "image of archetype," since it
is not produced by the painter's body, the original represented:
the reproduction is due to the effective laying on of the
colours.
Nor is there strictly any such making of image as we see in water
or in mirrors or in a shadow; in these cases the original is the
cause of the image which, at once, springs from it and cannot
exist apart from it. Now, it is in this sense that we are to
understand the weaker powers to be images of the Priors. As for
the illustration from the fire and the warmed object, the warmth
cannot be called an image of the fire unless we think of warmth
as containing fire so that the two are separate things. Besides,
the fire removed, the warmth does sooner or later disappear,
leaving the object cold.
If we are told that these powers fade out similarly, we are left
with only one imperishable: the souls, the
Intellectual-Principle, become perishable; then since Being
[identical with the Intellectual-Principle] becomes transitory,
so also must the Beings, its productions. Yet the sun, so long as
it holds its station in the universe, will pour the same light
upon the same places; to think its light may be lessened is to
hold its mass perishable. But it has been abundantly stated that
the emanants of the First are not perishable, that the souls, and
the Intellectual-Principle with all its content, cannot perish.
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